Aliens in the Peas

1266 Words

Aliens in the Peas

There were five of us kids. Four girls and one boy, ages seven to eleven, spending the summer doing all the things kids on a back-woods farm with bunches of time on our hands would do. Playing pirate along the creek -- or “crick” as we called it -- exploring the ancient ruins of old sheds and barns crammed with equally ancient artifacts -- farm implements and equipment from long ago -- racing from one end of the mile long field where our cattle grazed to the other, discovering useful and useless items abandoned in the creek “dump” a half mile from our rambling farm house, and in general, using our imaginations to explore all the possibilities kids can find. All we had that summer was enough to keep us busy most of the time, and when we found ourselves bored we were soon off on yet another adventure.

One day, in the late days of August just before school started, at the very beginning of the harvest we five decided that a great adventure could be had if we just struck out across the vast, as yet unexplored regions to the immediate south our summer kingdom. For while we had explored along the creek to the west and to the east as far as we could reasonably go between breakfast and lunch or between lunch and dinner, and we had thoroughly explored that vast expanses to the north from our house to the dusty gravel road winding past, we had never ventured more than a few hundred yards into the expansive field of peas to the south. But growing as bored as any group of kids can get at the end of a long hot summer, we finally got around to asking ourselves just how far that field went and if there might not be something truly interesting across the great pea green sea. So after we finished our breakfast, when we knew we could disappear for a good deal of time and not be missed, we set out on our adventure.

The land in that part of the world is a vast rolling sheet of patchwork fields, some planted with peas, some with wheat, some bare and resting. And like some kind of messed up quilt after a long night sleep the land was wrinkled with row after row of hills gently undulating up fifty to a hundred feet and down an equal amount. Up and down the land goes. Up and down, up and down, and up and down again. So we struck out climbing the gentle hills and descending into the next valley over and over. We walked amidst the peas growing in those fields and as we walked we discovered a most interesting thing.

Peas grow, as just about anybody knows, in pods. And when you break open a pod there is often a popping sound due to the crispness of the pea. So as we walked through the knee deep field of peas we found that occasionally we would inadvertently step on a pod of peas. And when we did the pod would “snap, crackle, or pop.” So enjoyable was the sound that after exploring nearly a mile we found ourselves running trough the peas field just to hear the cacophony of sounds. Of course as we ran, as luck would have it and because peas grow on vines which can easily trip you up, one of us eventually tripped. Whereupon we discovered those great sounds we were enjoying were greatly multiplied by our rolling descent. And since the delight of hearing all those wonderful sounds could not be easily resisted, pretty soon all of us were climbing up to the top of that hill and rolling down over and over.

We must have rolled for quite a while before someone noticed, to our horror, that the side of the hill upon which we had been rolling did not look like the sides of the hills around us. For much to our dismay, our rolling had produced a large square of ugly, flattened and probably ruined peas. Perfectly square, perfectly aligned with the sides of the hill, and perfectly straight at the top and bottom, the ruin could not have been more precise if we had measured it carefully before engaging in our accidental destruction.

We looked at each other and said nothing for a few moments, each imagining with horror what might await anybody having the audacity to destroy such a large patch of peas. Then we did what any respectable group of children might do under the circumstances -- we ran. Back up one rolling hill and down the other side, one hill after another, up and down, up and down, up and down, as fast as we could go until we arrived, exhausted at the safety of our small back yard. There we looked at each other and laughed the scared laugh of the condemned because we were sure our doom would soon descend upon us.

But hope springs eternal, especially in children, and after a few minutes we got ourselves under control and decided that the only chance we had was to hope that the peas would magically spring back up in a few days and that nobody would therefore notice the damage we had done. So we agreed that in the matter of the peas nothing would be said. Which would have been a great plan except it was, as I have said, harvest time.

About six o-clock Dad came home for dinner. We were sitting around the dinner table, having put the pea situation out of our mind, were merrily chatting away when we suddenly heard Dad say, “We saw the most unusual site today.”

My sisters and I looked at each other in horror. We knew what was coming. “What’s that?” Mom asked.

“Well,” my dad continued on, obviously prolonging our torture, “we started harvesting the south field – you know the one right outside the back yard, when about a mile from here there was a perfectly square patch of peas perfectly flattened. Flattened right down to the ground.”

“Perfectly square, you say?” Mom asked.

My dad nodded. “Yep, like somebody went out there and marked it off. Right on the side of the hill. Straight as an arrow at the top, at the bottom and on each side. It was the darnest thing.”

We kids sat silent. Staring our dad we just knew he would shortly be announcing our sentence of death. We didn’t even breath.

“What do you think caused that?” Mom finally inquired.

Dad said nothing for a few seconds and then answered. “Well, we looked around to see if some truck or tractor had been used to do the damage as some kind of joke we figured, but there were no tracks whatsoever.”

“Or maybe they came from the sky!” I suggested. One of my sisters kicked me under the table.

“Yeah, well, maybe,” was Dads response. “But we would have seen something flying. I mean we were setting up all morning and we know that it had to have been done this morning because the peas were still fresh. They didn’t look dried out at all.”

My dad sat there and after a few seconds, shrugged his shoulders and said, “maybe it’s just one of those things, like crop circles the aliens make. Who knows.” And then he went back to eating his meal.

We never found the end to that field because we never ventured into it again. Too many aliens in the peas is not a good thing.